May 29, 2000
Two counterposed class perspectives on health care, social security and pensions were put forward this past week. Presidential candidate George W. Bush made proposals for a transformation away from Social Security and Medicare. Democrat Vice President Albert Gore agreed the Social Security system will go bankrupt by mid-century.
Two days later, thousands of mine workers and their supporters rallied in Washington to demand Congress guarantee lifetime health coverage for retirees and widows.
Social Security is a social conquest, conceded by the wealthy ruling class in face of the rising industrial union movement in the 1930s, and the victories in the civil rights movement and the battles for Black liberation in the 1950s and ’60s. The labor movement needs to fight to extend the miners’ approach to the entire working class and integrate it into Social Security.
May 30, 1975
BOSTON — Thousands turned out here May 17 in a march and rally to salute the twenty-first anniversary of the Supreme Court decision outlawing public school segregation and to demand that it be implemented in Boston and other cities today. The event had as its theme “Twenty-one years is too long.”
Marchers responding to the call converged on this city from across the Charles River and the Mississippi River. But most came from Boston, a city that in the past year has seen the stiffest resistance to school desegregation of any Northern city. Militant reporters estimate about 15,000 attending the rally, making it the largest demonstration for desegregation yet held here.
The authority of the NAACP was a major factor in inspiring a large turnout. Not since the 1963 civil rights march on Washington has the NAACP supported a major demonstration.
May 29, 1950
Washington is using economic extortion and pressure on Yugoslavia in an effort to wrest political concessions from the Tito regime and force it to support Western imperialism in the “cold war.” This economic squeeze amounts to a hidden blockade paralleling the open one imposed by the Kremlin.
Loans promised to Yugoslavia are being held up. The facts about this move instigated by the State Department were revealed by columnist Robert Allen in the N.Y. Post. Allen writes that “international bankers have thrust a disruptive hand” into the negotiations for loans desperately needed by Yugoslavia, which was the hardest hit of any country in the last war.
The World Bank “has ‘strongly suggested’ to the Tito government that unless it comes to terms with the bankers, there will be no loan to build up Yugoslav industry, transportation and agriculture.”